4 held after Courtyard Place standoff ends peacefully

July 21, 2008|By Kelli Cheatham WSBT-TV Report

SOUTH BEND — Police surrounded a South Bend apartment complex early Monday morning, looking for three men with guns. It happened at the Courtyard Place apartments near the intersection of Jefferson and 26 Streets, on the city's east side. The standoff started with an anonymous 911 call. Just after 1 a.m., a man told police dispatchers three men with guns were harassing him. The first officers on scene saw three men who matched the caller's description run inside a Courtyard Place apartment building. South Bend Police Sgt. Cori Bair said one man threw his gun in a hallway inside the building, but officers arrested him right away. The other two gunmen went door-to-door in the complex looking for any unlocked doors, Bair told WSBT. That's when it turned into a standoff situation. One woman who said she knew people involved in the standoff said she tried to convince police to let her talk to her relatives. "I was terrified because I didn't know if they were going to shoot them down or anything," said the woman, who did not give her name. "Because you know they had guns drawn." Meanwhile, police evacuated several apartments within the complex. "We went door-to-door because, like I said, the initial call was that they had guns," Bair said. "And being an apartment complex, the walls are thinner and we want to make sure everybody was going to be safe so we evacuated everybody who was willing to evacuate." Bair also told WSBT police used a "distraction device" to wake people up and get their attention in order to speed up the evacuation process. Neighbors told WSBT it sounded like a bomb, but Bair described the device as "a loud bang." Police said they eventually found the other two men who ran from them. Those men were hiding inside the apartment of a woman who was already wanted on an outstanding warrant. Police arrested all three. In all, police took four suspects into custody. Officers say they believe the men knew the woman, but it is still unclear whether the gunmen lived at the Courtyard Place Apartments. The standoff ended peacefully around 2:45 a.m., and residents were allowed back into their apartments. There were no reported injuries. SBT24/7 News contributed to this report